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What will OpenFree become?

There have been many requests about the future of OpenFree.org and I'll address them here.

The community continues to be one of inquiring minds having free and open discussion about how everyday computing can change the world.

OpenFree will continue to be a primarily Linux community with other operating systems occupying no more than 20% of the threads.

Changes to the community will follow the guidelines proposed in the RFC thread. This will include any future mergers.

The community will continue its efforts to appeal to the core membership of systems administrators and power users. With this in mind, the forums section will continue with the current four categories:

OpenFree Discussion

Linux / *NIX Distributions

Linux General

Windows

The creation of additional categories will be subject to the RFC process.

I hope this will put the community's mind at ease so that OpenFree can continue to thrive.

As the dreadful Windows forum merger will not be undone consider me out of here, it has totally wrecked what was being built here not just because it was entirely a non-fit with the existing community but look at the kinds of threads we have had here lately. 90% Windows support filled with l33t speak.

I had forgotten why I joined until I found my first post. In any case, there's something appealing about the forum. I must admit I'm puzzled by the choice of a non-free forum engine and astonished to discover a "windows" section. (How did M$ manage to purloin common words like 'windows' and 'office'?)

The world is a comedy to me as well as a tragedy. It's weird the way someone can use 'open' and 'free' and, evidently, have no concept of the contradiction involved in using or catering for software which is neither. I toyed for a while with setting up a site to provide resources relevant to Linux or Foss generally. I never entertained the thought of catering for M$.

maybe I'm too new on your board but it seems that there is a lot of partiality in the comments above.
As a linux user since many years (I started with suse 6 in 1997) and still a windows user (games ?) I think there are benefits of having both system helps in the same board...It can lead win users to discover that there is life without windows.
and I can't see the problem: the ones who don't want to help others under other OS don't have to...there is free in the name of the board isn't it?
I personally think it is a good thing to have windows and linux on the same board, the problem is sectarianism of the communities and the lack of objectivity on both sides.
I know I'm new here I've been here for no more than a year and tried to be active as much as my spare time allows me but if by helping someone under windows i can lead this person to one day try linux (any flavor) I think then that I'll have done my part correctly...
most of windows users are not bad people they just don't know about the possibility to run other OS on their computer and by keeping these world well apart there is little chances they discover their existence.

Greetings. I'm a member of a group about to set up a new forum for a Foss product. I've mentioned vBulletin and the others have pretty well decided it isn't on because it will add to costs unnecessarily. That's fair enough but it also seems inconsistent to use if for a site supporting a Foss product.

SMF and myBB (both open source, although there's some limitation with the SMF licence) seem to be at least as good as the proprietary product. I'd like to know why you decided on vBulletin, if you don't mind disclosing that. Other Linux forums (including Ubuntu and linuxquestions) also use vBulletin. Some distros use SMF and a few use phpBB which is the overall favourite for forums generally.

Thank you. I am very interested in your comments. I've been opposing the use of phpBB because, according to my research, it suffers from unresolved security problems. On top of that, the posting editor is particularly frustrating: it's very small, the use of bbcode buttons results in focus returning to the top of the post so that you lose your place and it always places smileys at the end of the post instead of at the cursor position.

Nor does phpBB provide RSS. I've been plugging myBB because it does not have those disadvantages (not sure about smiley placement) and it offers the alternative of a threaded view which could be a boon in complex threads which diverge into several conversations.

I'd like to go back with something to support my argument. What comment do you have about myBB and can you comment about Phorum? What advantage does phpBB have over SMF (my second choice), which is nicer to use? Please recommend a Foss choice other than phpBB.

My experience with other applications is limited. I have merged forums using SMF and Invision into vBulletin, so my experience with them was fleeting. SMF seems to be one of the market leaders, so that could be a good choice.

Another big advantage of vBulletin is that it has utilities that allow you to import databases from other forum applications. This won't be important to you now, but it could be at some later date.